1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an apparatus and method for fan-folding container carriers, particularly those having a handle and/or a panel, in a space-efficient manner.
2. Description of Prior Art
Container carriers are used to unitize a plurality of containers. Typical containers are bottles, cans and other containers having a sidewall and a neck, chime or raised rib around an upper portion of the container. Container carriers typically connect two or more containers into a sturdy unitized package of containers. Container carriers are generally planar arrays of rings, sometimes referred to as “six-pack carriers,” and may be formed from a thermoplastic sheet material.
The thermoplastic sheet material is typically extruded and then punched so that large numbers of container carriers are formed end to end resulting in continuous elongated strings or strips of container carriers. Unless specified otherwise, container carriers as used in this specification are defined as the continuous elongated string of container carriers prior to application onto containers and subsequent division into individual container carriers.
Prior art methods of packaging container carriers involve accumulating the elongated strings of container carriers onto reels. The reels of container carriers are unwound at a later time during application onto containers. The reel method of storing and applying the container carriers to containers requires splicing the end of one reel with the beginning of the following reel without interrupting the application process. In addition, the reel method of storing and applying carriers is generally limited to reels of a size which may be physically lifted and manipulated by the applicating machine operator. Also, the reel unwinding equipment must accommodate the inertia and resultant backlash inherent in unwinding a wound strip of material. Further, the generally circular or octagonal shape of the reels limits the number of reels which may be assembled onto a single pallet for shipment between the production facility and the application facility.
Wanderer, U.S. Pat. No. 3,285,405, and Slaters Jr. et al., U.S. Pat. No. 6,068,125, incorporated by reference herein, disclose methods for storing and dispensing container carriers wherein elongated strings of container carriers are fan folded, similar to pin-feed computer paper, into boxes or cartons. The container carriers are dispensed from the boxes or cartons during the application process and successive boxes or cartons containing stacks of container carriers are spliced together as the boxes empty.
However, such methods for storing and dispensing container carriers may lead to uneven accumulation of the container carriers at each end of the box or carton, specifically where the container carriers are folded over onto each other. More particularly, when the container carrier includes a handle, a panel or some other extraneous feature, uneven stacking and/or unwinding is even more problematic. As a result, cartons may suffer from uneven stacks of folded container carriers whereby a central portion of the carton is not filled to capacity and end portions of the carton include distinctly higher stacks of carriers. This problem is referred to as “birdsnesting” and may result in inefficiently packed cartons of container carriers and even tangling of the string of container carriers during the unwinding process.